Brett Ratner Joins Eddie Murphy For ‘Beverly Hills Cop IV’

Movies & TV

VIBE | December 10, 2013 - 3:36 pm

Share < br />this article:

The long-gestating follow-up to the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy is finally making its way back to the public consciousness. Brett Ratner has signed on to direct the fourth installment, about five years after he was initially in talks.

The project was in the works for years before Eddie Murphy announced a couple of years ago that he decided to make it into a small screen television series rather than a film. Teaming with Shawn Ryan and adding Brandon T. Jackson as his son, whom the show would be centered around, they shopped the concept to network and were picked up by CBS.

After the pilot episode was revealed, the Eye decided it didn’t want the show after all, and Murphy went back to trying to make Beverly Hills Cop IV happen as a film product.

The flow has been moving at a snail’s pace eve since. Jerry Bruckheimer was set to produce with Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol scribes Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec quickly brought on to write the script. When Bruckheimer closed the deal with Paramount, he made sure to let everyone know that the fourth installment of BHC would be one of his top priorities.

The screenplay is still being worked on, but should be finished shortly. Ratner, meanwhile, is currently putting the finishing touches on the Dwayne Johnson-starrer Hercules, and is expected to jump to Beverly Hills Cop IV soon afterwards. Murphy, of course, is already attached to star, but there’s no word on whether Jackson will play his son as he was slated to do on the television series.